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Will Molly Douglas be kicked out of mayoral race?

Molly Douglas didn’t fill out the date on her mayoral qualification form, a requirement on the document.

But is that enough to keep the city commissioner from running for mayor?

Post Staff/ Document has been manipulated to hide address

Probably not, said city officials and a Tallahassee election attorney.

The City Clerk’s office and the city attorney spent Wednesday determining whether Douglas’ failure to date her qualification form would exclude her from the March 8 election.

State officials in Tallahassee said it was up to West Palm Beach to interpret the law.

In a statement, a city spokesman said, “The paperwork was dated by the City Clerk with a time stamp on the day Commissioner Douglas signed and submitted it in the clerks presence.”

Douglas gave the same explanation. “I stood right there, (the city clerk) stood right here, I signed it, she stamped, and I thought policy and procedure was for it to be done that way.”

All of the other mayoral and commission candidates dated their forms.

In 2008, Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell was disqualified from a commission race after her treasurer signed a form that Mitchell was supposed to sign. Mitchell’s opponent, Rebecca Henderson-Young, was also disqualified for paying her filing fee out of her personal account instead of a campaign account. The city was then forced to hold a special election between Mitchell and Henderson-Young.

But Jennifer Blohm, a Tallahassee attorney specializing in election law, said there is no state or city statue that requires a form to be dated.

Although West Palm Beach’s charter requires a qualifying form to be filled out properly, and the qualifying form states that the date is required, Blohm said a challenge likely wouldn’t hold up in court.

She pointed to a similar case that was shut down in court which challenged an opponent who had notary problems on his qualifying form.

“The notary itself was not required by statue, so it was not a qualification issue,” Blohm said. “(Douglas’ form is) clearly not filled out correctly, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s more of would a court look at that as a disqualifying issue? From the court cases recently, it doesn’t look like that’s where the courts are going on these types of cases.”